Galatians 6:6-10
Please be seated. Please turn
in your copy of the scriptures to the book of Galatians chapter
six, I believe in the pew Bible. It’s found on page 75. We’re nearing the end of Paul’s
first letter that he wrote as a As a minister of God, as an
apostle of God, he on his first missionary journey passed through
the regions of Galatia where there were several churches started
it as he heard bad news of false teaching and people striving
to be found right with God by good works instead of justification
by faith in Jesus alone. And in his good works, he wrote
them this letter. And as we get to the end of it
here in chapter six, we’re really in a part two of what we looked
at last week, where the apostle Paul is saying, if you come to
Jesus by faith and receive and rest in him alone for salvation,
and you live by the poured out Holy spirit and not by the flesh,
Uh, there will be fruit, uh, fruitful living in the life of
the church. And so today is a second part of what that looks like.
Uh, last week, I believe he showed that we should bear one another’s
burdens. Particularly, uh, if someone is caught in a sin, we
should rescue and redeem them. Uh, we should bear one another’s
burdens and hardships as the body of the Lord Jesus. And so
today he’ll add to that list of how we serve one another.
Before we read God’s word, let’s ask for his help and blessing.
Pray with me. Lord, give us eyes that see and ears that hear and
hearts that perceive the eternal truths that are written on the
pages of scripture, and may they be written in our minds and in
our hearts and put into practice in our lives by the grace of
God through Christ Jesus, our Lord, and the power of the Holy
Spirit, we pray in his name, amen. Hear the word of the living
God, Galatians 6, beginning at verse 6. Let the one who is taught
the word share all good things with the one who teaches. Do
not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever
one sows, that he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own
flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But the one who sows
to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life. and let us
not grow weary of doing good. For in due season, we will reap
if we do not give up. So then as we have opportunity,
let us do good to everyone and especially to those who are of
the household of faith. Amen, God’s living word for us. There’s always the question,
how do we know if we’re a true church? How do we know if we’re
a true church of the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, in the history
of the church since the Protestant Reformation, there’ve been three
marks of the true church. And those three marks are these,
the right preaching of the word, the proper administration of
the sacraments, and then the discipline or order of the church. Those three things aren’t the
only marks of the true church. But I think they’re good ones.
They’re the top ones, the primary ones. And so we want to be a
church that preaches the word, that administers the sacraments,
baptism and the Lord’s Supper properly, but also maintains
good church order. But I think another way, and
we can get this from here at the end of Galatians 6, another
way to see if you’re a true church. is to see if the spirit is at
work among you. Is the fruit of the spirit evident
in the life of individual, but also the collection of believers?
Now, yes, there will be sin. There will be some that quench
the spirit or don’t live by the spirit. And yes, sometimes churches
fall into error or even grievous sins and need the Lord’s correction. That’s why it’s wonderful when
we read in the book of Revelation, the seven letters to the seven
churches and Jesus comes among the lampstands and says, Remember
your first love, get back to it. And if you do, I’ll bless
you. And if you don’t, I’ll snuff
out your candle. You will no longer be a light
or a witness. And so I think it’s good to remember as a church,
the marks of a church preaching and sacraments and discipline
or order, but also the work of the Holy Spirit, that there’s
a fragrance of fruit and bearing fruit in the life of the church.
These are, markers of the Christian community. And we’ve seen so
far in Galatians 6 that we should bear one another’s burdens. That’s
a result of the fruit of the spirit. We see and we meet others
needs. Now, we don’t know a lot about
what was going on in the Galatian churches. We can read into what
Paul writes to them and pleads with them and teaches them. But
we don’t know everything that was going on in their ministry,
but we’ll figure a little bit along the way. We do, however,
know what is true of us. We can do a self-assessment as
individuals. Are we or aren’t we living by
the Spirit? Are we or aren’t we conceited or provoking and
envying one another? Are we bearing one another’s
burdens? Those sorts of questions. And so while Paul was writing
to the Galatian church, and we might wonder a little bit about
what he was dealing with, We know very clearly, and perhaps
the Holy Spirit will show us more clearly, how we could better
live by the Spirit as individuals, but in the life of the church. And so we want to think for a
few moments today about what that fruit looks like, what steps
we can take to show that we are a church that has life in the
Spirit. And so as we think on Galatians
6, 6 through 10, we want to think about how the fruit of the Spirit
works in the life of God’s family in real and tangible and practical
ways. And I think there’s five categories
that pop up in this passage. We have responsibilities towards
our ministers. We have responsibilities towards
God. We have responsibility for our
own actions. We have responsibility to persevere
in doing good things, good works. And then we have a responsibility
towards others. And so today, as we think through
Galatians 6, let’s think through how the spirit may work in each
of us and in our congregation as a whole to show that we are
a fruit-bearing congregation. Well, the first topic’s a little
awkward for the preacher. Verse six, but it comes up, so
here it is. Verse six, let the one who has
taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches.
You know, sometimes I get asked, do you ever preach on tithing?
And the answer is I do when it comes up. Well, does it ever
come up? Well, it’s come up now. You see
the implication. You echo back to Exodus 35. How does God accomplish his work?
He uses people. He uses our gifts. He uses our
abilities. He uses our resources. What God
has entrusted to us, he therefore seeks to use a bit of it for
the life and the ministry of his church. He did so in the
old covenant. Everyone was under obligation for the tithe. When
you come to the New Testament, you see the principle of the
tithe is not thrown out, but it’s maybe given a little more
oomph in light of what God has done for us in Christ. Remember
the Heidelberg Catechism, what are the three things we need
to know that we may live and die in the joy of his comfort?
We know our guilt, we know our grace, and we know our gratitude. And one of the things the Heidelberg
Catechism will walk through is our duty towards God. And that duty towards God is
not to save us. We’re saved by faith in Jesus
and we’re saved by his good works. But we live lives of thanksgiving.
So we come to worship. It’s a duty we have before God.
We worship God for the redemption that he has done for us in Christ. We pray. We serve one another,
we bear burdens, we bear fruit, we do all these sorts of things.
And one of the things that we are privileged to do as believers
is we get to give back to God as if he needs it, but he does
choose to use it. And so Paul mentions here preacher
pay. Now, I want to tell you, this
is a subject near and dear to my heart, not because I’m a preacher
and get paid, that does help. And I appreciate the living I
do receive from the work. But my wife and I are both preacher’s
kids. I have a soft spot in my heart
for preachers because most churches, and I want you to hear this loud
and clear, most churches don’t deserve a preacher because they
don’t take care of them. And if you’ve ever served on
a church committee, maybe as a deacon, as an elder, as a board
member on a pulpit committee, you know the motto, Lord, we’ll
keep him poor. And how does it go? If you’ll
keep him, Oh good, y’all don’t know. You’ll keep him humble.
That’s good, good for y’all. Lord, we’ll keep him poor, you
keep him humble. That’s sort of the joke among ministers about
the reality in the life of the church. And that is pretty widespread
around the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Just a few weeks
ago when I was on the trip through the Grand Canyon, there were
a couple fellows from Answers in Genesis who were part of their
audio visual team and they were, they were filming a documentary
about the geology and all the interest in the worldwide flood
of Noah’s day and the impact it had on the Grand Canyon. So
there were these three guys and they were mostly had cameras
in their faces and were videoing, but sitting on the boat one day
with one of them, he figured out I was a pastor and he was
telling me my dad was a pastor in Southern Ohio. And we started
sharing preacher kid stories. And he tells this story and you
can see, you know, 20 years later, this angst came over him. He
said his dad pastored a little church in rural Southern Ohio,
and they lived in a church owned house that was full of black
mold. And the church pretty much threatened the dad, if you don’t
live in this house, you can no longer be our preacher. Well,
his sister, he said, got sick from this black mold. He said
they kind of kept under the pressure living there and just kind of
getting by. Finally, the grandfather came, moved them out of the house,
rented them an apartment in town and took care of the family.
He called the health department. The health department showed
up and they condemned and tore the house down. But you see the
spiritual pride the church had, we’ve got a house, our preacher
is going to live in it. If he doesn’t live in it, something’s wrong.
And just the sort of the impact of him telling that story reminded
me of how so few ministers are privileged to be well treated
by the congregation. And so when Paul speaks of this,
we don’t know the situation in Galatia. Of course, you fast
forward to today and you know, you got to pay a preacher and
there’s, federal taxes and there’s health insurance and all the
rest. It’s not cheap to have a pastor. And so when I mentioned
that a lot of churches don’t deserve a pastor, the reason
they don’t deserve a pastor is because they have no intention
of taking care of them. And so they don’t deserve to
treat someone like perhaps this fella mentioned on the trip.
Maybe some of you still have PTSD from congregational meetings. where the congregation would
fight over how we are or are not going to take care of the
pastor. It’s pretty well known, I think,
that the least paid professionals in this world are generally public
servants like school teachers and police officers and generally
pastors. A friend of our families who
we’ve known probably for close to 50 years now served a church
down in the southern part of the state, and he built the church’s
ministry up. I think a couple thousand members,
they went through some building campaigns, grew the church, big
and going well. Well, one of the power families,
you know how that goes in church, decided they didn’t want him
to be there anymore. And so he walks in on a Sunday morning,
ready to give his heart and preach for the Lord, and there were
the deacons waiting with their arms crossed. You’re not our pastor
anymore. And the church has since collapsed.
Can’t make their payments, can’t make their debt. The people loved
him. Very interesting how the world is connected. We had a
student come to Elon about two years ago, met him, came to church. We go to coffee. Where are you
from? He tells me, where’d you grow up in church? He grew up
in my friend’s church. And I said, is it true? And he
said, oh, you wouldn’t believe what they did to this man. This
man was 60 years old and at the end of his career, so to speak,
and went through this. I think of how many pastors I
know, they live in a church-owned house, the dishwasher breaks.
Well, we’ll get around to fixing it. Well, you know that deacon’s
wife is going to get a brand new dishwasher or else, right?
But the, you know, the minister’s family can suffer. They can hand
wash dishes. A lot of ministers quietly suffer. Paul is gonna
tell Timothy, the workman is worthy of his wages. You think
back to the Old Testament where God in the Old Testament says,
don’t withhold the wages of the worker overnight. Payday is at
the end of every day. And so you get these principles
in the scriptures. And so perhaps one day you’ll
serve a church, maybe on a pulpit committee or a compensation committee
or something like that, maybe here or elsewhere, Treat ministers
of God’s word as you wish to be treated. A couple months ago,
a friend of mine at a local church asked if I would come meet with
his elders and help negotiate. His pay was pretty poor and the
church had all these pet projects. And so he asked me pretty much,
come sit down with us and tell us what they need to hear. And
I knew the church pretty well, knew their budget. And I said,
look, y’all have all these pet projects. And these pet projects
do nothing for the worship of God or for the preaching of the
word of God. And so you’ve got all these pet
projects that are really extraneous and doing nothing for the life
of the church by Christ’s command. And you’ve got a pastor here
who’s suffering. And they heard that loud and clear, was thankful
for that. But very often churches don’t
think about what their minister needs. They live in the same
economy you do. They live under the same constraints,
healthcare requirements, all those sorts of things. And so
Paul does the ministers at Galatia a favor. Now, moving on through
this passage, the fruit of the spirit would say, we take care
of our ministers. The fruit of the spirit would
also say we have a responsibility towards God. If you look at verse
seven, it’s a really strong verse. Do not be deceived. God is not
mocked. For whatever one sows, that he
will also reap. Now, you read through different
commentaries on this passage and you can tell who the preachers
are. They directly connect verse seven with verse six. You don’t
take care of your ministries, you’re mocking your minister,
you’re mocking God. and you’re gonna reap what you
sow. Now, okay, I can agree with that. But I think the main point
that he’s giving here at the end of Galatians is this, God
sees your heart. God knows what your thoughts
and your intentions and your motives are. He knows why you
do what you do and why you don’t do what you don’t do. And so
God who judges our thoughts and actions cannot be mocked. Literally, you cannot turn your
nose up against almighty God. Remember in the book of Acts,
when Ananias and Sapphira, they come to the leaders of the church
and said, we sold some land and we’re giving it all to the church.
You know, we want a bronze plaque on the end of our payment, right?
That’s usually how it goes. Well, they lied to the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit knew what they had done. They sold a piece of
property. And when all the church was holding
things in common and helping the poor, They sold it for thus
and such a price, but held back a bit for themselves, told everybody
we’re giving it all, but the Holy Spirit said, no, you’re
lying. And so Ananias died and they hauled him out. Sapphira
comes up and she corroborates the story because apparently
they pre-planned it. She falls over dead and they haul her out.
God will not be mocked. And so, yeah, there’s probably
a connection to Paul’s admonition here. to take care of ministers. There’s probably a connection
to what we looked at last week, where if a brother or sister
in the church is caught in sin and we turned a blind eye to
them and we say, well, they’re sinners, give them the scarlet
letter, write them off, go away. Or do we gently restore them
as Galatians 6, 1 and following taught. Again, God will not be
mocked. God will see and judge. You cannot make a fool of God.
Now we live in a day and time Well, as has been every generation
where we mock God. Psalm 2 says, the nations rage,
the people plot in vain against the Lord and against his anointed.
But it goes on to say about God, he sits in the heavens and he
laughs, he chuckles. Can you imagine the belly laugh
that God has when he looks down on the little ants of the world
and they’re getting their little kingdom meeting together and
say, we’re gonna beat God. We’re going to take the Bible
out of schools. We’re going to take prayer out of the public
square. We’re going to take the 10 commandments out of civil
law. We’re going to mock Christians,
even those who give Catholic speeches at Catholic college
graduations. We’re going to mock them. We’re
going to cancel them. We’re going to do all these things.
God sits in the heavens and laughs. You mock God. He will mock you
back and his mocking is an eternal and mighty mocking. You cannot
make a fool of God. And so maybe Paul is giving us
verse seven as a response to taking care of ministers that
that could be there. Yes, God wants his. ministers,
his emissaries, his apostles like Paul to be well cared for
and well respected, that is probably there. But it reminds us more
of a Old Testament principle. When we don’t take care of others,
whether it’s the minister or the one caught in sin or the
poor among us, as we might read of in the Old Testament civil
law, when we turn our eye to the poor or to someone in need,
we’re really turning our eye. away from God. We’re turning
our heart against God and his heart. And so we don’t fulfill,
as Paul says, the law of the spirit of Jesus. And you think
back to the Proverbs, him who sows sparingly will reap sparingly,
but him who sows richly will reap generously. Now we can’t
be mechanical about it. We don’t want to be like the
TV preachers that says, you know, you sow a seed, you’re going
to get a bigger return, right? Sometimes you do, sometimes you
don’t. Sometimes we sow generously and receive nothing back. And
if that’s the way God has it, so be it. But the principle of
the Old Testament, the principle and ethics of the heart of God
is he who waters, the Proverbs say, will himself be watered. And so God is not mocked in our
behavior and in our actions. Well, there’s a third area where
we find responsibility. Yes, we have a responsibility
as fruit-bearing people to our ministers. We have a responsibility
before the all-seeing eye of God who will not be mocked. But
verses seven and eight tell us very clearly, we are responsible
for our actions. What you reap, you will sow. And so whatever you sow, you
will reap. If you sow to the flesh, you’ll reap corruption.
If you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life. Actions
have consequences. You know, when you’re following
a little toddler around the house when they’re mobile and touching
everything, you know, we might tap them on the hand and say,
no, don’t stick your finger in the electrical outlet, or no,
don’t flush the toilet incessantly, or no, don’t open the refrigerator
and climb in, those sorts of things. We know that actions
have consequences. You’ll get shocked. You’ll run
up the water bill, you’ll flood the bathroom, you can get stuck
in a refrigerator, those kinds of things. They’re actions that
have consequences. And that’s true in the universe
and spiritually. There are laws of nature and
laws of spirituality that have consequences. And don’t we live
in a day that tries to remove every consequence of this world?
You know, we always say from time to time, if you ride down
Church Street and you don’t like your yellow teeth, you can get
them whitened. If you don’t like your hair loss, you can get some
plugs. If you don’t like your gray hair, you can get it colored.
If you got aches and pains, you can go to the chiropractor. You
don’t feel good, and so you get some gene therapy. You need a little pick-me-up,
you go to Starbucks. And there’s every kind of place that will
do every kind of thing that will hopefully, in our minds, delay
the inevitable. But there are laws of the universe.
Things are gonna get old, things are gonna hurt, things are gonna
sag, things are gonna wear out, they’re gonna rust out, they’re
going to break. The world tries to remove the
consequences, but God, who will not be mocked, has a sense of
humor, doesn’t he? And so in this world, there are laws of
the universe that just work. So if you plant a corn seed,
what’s gonna grow? Corn. Plant beans, what’s gonna
pop up out of the ground? Beans. Know that in every living thing,
whether it’s human or plant or animal, there’s DNA. That DNA
transmits information and it determines heredity. It determines
the outcome. But we also have to remember
Job. Remember Job’s worthless friends
who came and comforted him after calamity from Satan fell upon
him. One of his friends in chapter four of Job says, you know, look,
Job, you’ve done it all wrong. The reason things are terrible
in your life, you know, that your wife hates you, your children
are all dead, your livestock’s all been carried away in the
storms. The reason is because you’re reaping what you sow.
Well, we know that’s not true, right? Because we read what God’s
word says about Job. He was a righteous man. There
wasn’t anybody that matched him in the ancient Near East. He
worshiped God. He offered sacrifices. He even
offered extra sacrifices in case it was that his children sinned
against God. Job was doing all the right things before the face
of almighty God. And yet in God’s sovereignty,
he lost it all. And so we can’t be mechanistic
about reaping and sowing, reaping and sowing. We can’t be like
the TV preachers who say, sow a seed and you’ll get rich. It
may be that you have cancer. It may be that you are falling
apart. It may be that you’re poor and broke. And that’s all
in God’s wisdom and in his sovereignty. And so we understand that life
in this world is not always fair, but the scripture says spiritually,
if we sow the wind, we will reap the whirlwind. The scriptures
say that if we do not sow, we will profit nothing. But the
scriptures also promise that if we sow righteousness, we will
reap steadfast love. If we seek Yahweh, he will rain
righteousness upon us. And so Paul is taking that Old
Testament wisdom principle and he’s saying, if you sow the flesh,
you’re going to reap corruption. And you remember the list of
the flesh. It’s all those, unmentionable things that ought not to be done
by people who are new creations in Jesus. Now, remember, we live
with remnant sin. We live with the flesh. We live
with corruption. And so when the world and the
flesh and the devil rear up their ugly heads, sometimes we sow
to the flesh. And you’re not going to reap
spiritual blessings, you’re going to reap corruption. And that’s
a danger for the Christian. We can go back to our old nature,
our old man, and we can reap and sow in corruption and sin
and flesh. But if we sow to the Spirit,
we will reap eternal life. And so God wants us to be responsible
to our ministers. He wants us to be responsible
before his all-seeing eye, but he also wants us to be responsible
for our actions. Every action has a consequence.
And if we sow to the flesh, we’ll reap corruption, and if we sow
to the Spirit, we’ll reap eternal life. Well, there’s another responsibility
that pops up in this passage. We have a responsibility to persevere. Yes, responsible to our ministers,
to God and for our actions, but we have a responsibility, verse
nine tells us, not to grow weary in doing good. For in due season,
we will reap if we do not give up. You know, if you’re living
the Christian life, It sometimes, or maybe oftentimes,
looks like other people are having a little more fun than we are.
The psalmist in Psalm 73 understood this. He says in Psalm 73, basically
this, why is everybody who’s unrighteous, why are they fat,
sleek, and happy? Why are they living the good
life? And the psalmist in Psalm 73 says, for a pretty good while,
I was upset with God. God, you’re holding back. I wanna
be fat, sleek, and happy. And then he goes to church. He
goes into the temple. He goes into the house of the
Lord and he sees again what is good, right, and true. And he
repents and says, God, I was even brutish towards you. I was
like a brute, a wild beast, because I didn’t think you were giving
me what I ought to have. And I was angry. I was unhappy.
I was discontent. I was idolatrous. And brothers
and sisters, it can be that way living in this world. Why do
the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer? Why all the losses and
crosses when I’m following Jesus? Why all the struggles and pains
and hardships? Why do I have nothing to show,
maybe physically in this life, when others have so much to show? We can become weary, and as the
psalmist was, like a brute before Almighty God. This past week,
I stumbled on some little audio of a reading of a Puritan, and
it was something like this, that a Christian gains at death.
Now, go back to what I said a moment ago. You can ride down Church
Street and try to avoid the inevitable, right? We don’t wanna die. We
don’t wanna have pain. We don’t wanna have our bodies fall apart.
We wanna live as long as we can, the best we can, and hopefully
never die. That’s sort of the American way.
Well, there was this list of seven things a Christian gains
at death. And the first one, no more sin. Sin is ended at death. no more temptation, no more struggling
with the remnant corruption that is in us. And it went on to list
seven things gained at death. And I think our perspective is
all out of whack. If God is calling us to work,
to do good things that please him, bring glory to his name
and good to our neighbors by the power of the spirit, not
for saving, not for salvation, that’s done for us through the
work of Jesus, but to show God our gratitude, We’re gonna have
some stretches of life that seem pretty mundane. Lord, I’ve taken
the trash out for the umpteenth time. Lord, I’ve changed diapers
for the millionth time. Lord, I’ve gone to work and not
gotten a promotion. Lord, I’ve paid my bills and
I got nothing left. Lord, and you can fill in the
blank of all the weariness of life in this world. And God says,
don’t quit. Don’t grow weary in doing good. Read the Proverbs, read the Ecclesiastes,
read the Song of Solomon, read the wisdom books, Job, and the
places in the scripture where God says life is not fair this
side of heaven. Life is not fair with this sin-filled
and sin-cursed world. We wanna go up and often we go
down. We wanna go this way and we get tugged that way. It happens
with our hearts, our emotions, our dollars, our sense, our work,
our recognition and on and on. And God says, don’t stop. Perhaps you go to a ball game,
maybe a basketball game or a football game and it’s third quarter and
your team’s down by a touchdown or a couple of baskets. Inevitably,
they show up on the board to get the crowd going. Journey,
don’t stop believing, right? And they get the whole crowd
to sing, you know, karaoke, don’t stop believing. That’s in a sense
what Paul is doing here. He’s saying to faint-hearted
Christians, and at Galatia, they’re suffering with false teachers.
In Galatia, they’re struggling with the Roman empire and the
dark culture that’s all around them. The church is in turmoil.
There’s conflicting teachings going on in the life of the church.
And he’s saying, don’t stop. Keep your eyes on God. Keep your
eyes on his word. Keep on keeping on. Persevere. And when you’re drooping, ask
the spirit for help. That is the pilgrim way, isn’t
it, brothers and sisters? It’s to persevere against all
odds. I love, though, how R.C. Sproul,
when he speaks of the perseverance of the saints, he says, we got
the wrong P word. It’s really the preservation
of the saints. Yeah, the saints persevere. They get up and, you
know, they dig it out and run a little harder and don’t hit
the proverbial wall that maybe a runner or jogger feels. But
it’s really God preserving us. He who began a good work. will
be faithful to complete it. And that’s why God gives us the
church. That’s why God gives us one another. That’s why God
gives us the word. He gives us prayer. He gives
us fellowship. That’s why he just said in last week’s study,
bear one another’s burdens. You see somebody weak, need and
weary with this world because life isn’t fair to them. You
come alongside them and you get up under their shoulder. And
you encourage them, been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Let
me help you along the way. That’s why we need one another
in the kingdom life. Well, we also have a responsibility
to others. This is the fifth and the final
thing. Responsibility to ministers, a responsibility to God, a responsibility
for our actions and our responsibility to persevere. But we also have
a responsibility to others. Verse 10 says, so then as we
have opportunity, Let us do good to everyone, especially to those
who are of a household of faith. You know, as we live life together
in the church, as we live kingdom life, we need to have eyes that
see and meet needs. It’s good that Christians over
the centuries have been the loving people. We’ve set up hospitals.
We’ve set up education systems, colleges and universities. We’ve
set up soup kitchens and homeless shelters. And the church has
done a lot of diaconal servant-like work in the world. Now today
in America’s church, churchianity, you might call it, we see less
of that. I think people are more self-centered
and self-seeking and self-serving, and so the church is limited
in its resources, and so we often don’t see those kingdom realities
as we used to. But God is saying, open your
eyes, and as you go through life, see needs and meet them. But
Paul gives a caveat here. He says, first, within the household
of faith. several weeks back when we had
our Sunday school series on growing the church, we talked about mercy.
It’s the job of the church to be merciful inside the church
and outside. Yes, outside we support the pregnancy
center and the men’s shelter, and we support the fellowship
of Christian athletes and ministry to Muslims through our denomination.
And we got worldwide missions in Spain and in Wales and in
Africa and other places. And so we are merciful either
hands-on or through our prayer and financial support. around
the world, but we also looked at how mercy is inside. When
someone is sick, we help them. When someone is hurt, we help
them. When someone is sorrowing, we
mourn with them and on and on. And so life in the kingdom. The
ethics of the Old Testament, the ethics of the New Testament,
the example of Jesus demands that we constantly look for needs
and seek to meet those needs inside and outside the church,
but especially inside the church. We think of Jesus, his life and
ministry was characterized by seeing people and having pity
on them, seeing people and having compassion on them. My grandmother,
Betty, was a person like that. She would quietly see that people’s
needs were met. And some years into my life,
my dad did a little thing on St. Nicholas, the Bishop of Mira,
Turkey, and the whole myth of Santa Claus comes from him. Sorry
if I ruined that for anybody. St. Nick was known for giving
gifts in secret to others. And so when dad put together
his little script on St. Nicholas and it went into booklet
form, he dedicated it to my grandmother, who he said was a St. Nicholas
in his mind. And that’s the idea that I think
we should have. We should see and meet needs
in our circle or sphere of influence, and we should do it quietly.
I remember when my grandmother died, people came out of the
woodwork to say she always made sure I had rent. She always made
sure our family didn’t go without groceries, and she was always
dropping those little helps. Someone in our congregation came
to me about a year ago and said, if there’s ever a need I can
meet, you let me know and I’ll meet it. What a sweet attitude
that is. What a sweet spirit that is,
especially in our self-centered culture. Well, Paul says if we
work hard without growing weary, that a harvest is coming. And
that harvest ought to give us strength as we plow and as we
sow and as we sweat and as we toil, as we stub our toes and
hit our fingers with hammers and sort of painfully get through the ordinary things of life,
the mundane things of life. A week or two ago, some of us
attended the Fellowship of Christian Athletes fundraiser. And one
of the ladies on staff of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes
stood up and talked about the impact that you may have on someone
that you may never know you had. And she spoke of how, in about
1984, she went to a Fellowship of Christian Athletes event at
Elon University, then Elon College, I suppose. And she got to, as
a little girl, seven or eight years old, meet the athletes
and sort of throw the football and, you know, do different things
with the FCA folks. And she said this one particular
athlete came up to her, gave her a hug and said, I hope you
love Jesus or something just quick and brief like that. Well,
as she was giving this testimony, this big old guy, 40 years later
comes walking out beside her. And that was the guy. She had
tracked him down and she had found him. The point I wanna
make to you, the point she was making is you never know that
in your mundane, ordinarily daily faithful life that you may be
sick and tired of, but get encouraged by Jesus and other Christians
and the Holy Spirit to press on in, you may never know this
side of heaven, who you have impacted, who you have blessed,
who you’ve made a small deposit of God’s grace, goodness, brightness,
and glory. And so don’t grow weary and your
responsibilities to one another, to the household of faith, but
even to the watching world who so desperately need the love
and the touch of the Lord Jesus. Pray with me. Lord, we ask that
what we have heard today would be written in our hearts, etched
in our minds, put on our to-do list so that by your spirit,
in our small part of the world, we might serve you, by giving
a little bitty kingdom impact wherever you send us. Help us
to be spiritually awake, spiritually attentive, and spiritually minded
so that we can do spiritual things and be a great blessing for it
is our duty and may it be our delight. We pray in Christ’s
mighty name. Amen. We want to respond